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Flight and Freedom (Jumpchain/OC)

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John is captured and sent on a Jumpchain by a Benefactor conducting an experiment. Is all as it first seems, or is there a hidden intent behind the Benefactor's experiment? Follow John as he is endures the Jumpchain.
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  • Informational
    • RandomOTP

    RandomOTP

    Location
    Book Fort
    Pronouns
    They/Them
    This is me trying to get back into writing after almost six months of no writing whatsoever. As such, I'll be writing this fic primarily to get back into the habit of writing, as well as for my own enjoyment. While I'll try to keep the internal logics and characterizations constant, I don't plan on making this a "rational" fic. Real Life things are also weird right now, so I may be limited on what I write.

    This is not a Self-Insert (I would have very little interest in living a jumpchain, but I hope to enjoy writing one).
    John is picked up by a morally questionable Benefactor while visiting his small town home. Lured in with the promise of adventure and escapism, John leaves his world behind (as well as, John hopes, his problems) in order to be a willing test subject for the Benefactor's "Jumpchain" experiment.
    This is a work of fanfiction, I own none of the settings/universes/worlds depicted within.

    This work's mechanical premise is based on the Jumpchain CYOA Community, heavily inspired by Companion Chronicles

    The views of the characters present within this work are not necessarily the views of the author.

    The story has no beta-readers, and chapters that are posted may have minor SPaG and/or continuity errors. Please be gentle.

    Until it is completed, this story will be a living document. Details may be altered, changed, erased, or otherwise retconned in the future.
    This is for those who are curious about the mechanics of the jumpchain. Can be safely ignored.

    universal drawback supplement
    Random-chan
    Jumps are randomly chosen from a constructed list via rolls​
    ​
    Limited Access
    The Warehouse is only accessible from properties that the Jumper owns​
    Rated M, as a result, the story includes the following...
    • harsh language
    • depictions of depression
    • discussions of mortality
    This list is subject to change
    A list of spoilers for the following...
    This list is subject to change

    The plan is to post every other Sunday.
    Audience participation, speculation, and reactions, are wonderful and encourages writing ^.^
     
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    Prologue
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    • Prologue


    ---​

    In the space between steps, I was suddenly somewhere else. One step, I was in my hometown of Hope –a small rural town near the Appalachian Mountains. The next, I was in a warehouse. My stumbled halting echoed off the high walls and skyscraper ceiling.

    "Lost and lonely, a soul splintered and fractured –falling –forgotten with a blueblack bruise that won't heal." A chorus of choruses addressed me, speaking as one, with dulcet bass tones overlapping with harsher soprano, conjoined with layers of tenor and alto.

    Heart racing, I desperately sought for the source of the voice. The inhuman, wrong voice that spoke with the frightening unity of a thousand voices leashed to one mouth.

    They were behind me, standing just close enough to break social protocol without being blatantly rude. Impossibly pale, with limbs too long and eyes that saw too much.

    "Where am I," I scrambled back, taking a few footsteps back. The… thing in front of me remained as still as a statue, eyes boring into me. "Why am I here?"

    "You are in the Vessel." Their mouth didn't move, the voices resounded all around me, as if spoken by a crowd that surrounded me. "You have been chosen. We will present the offer, and you will accept."

    Despite myself, I glanced around, and saw no one. Whatever the thing in front of me was, we were alone. My hands began to shake –fear or anger, fight or flight, I don't know –so I crossed my arms across my chest and pretended that it wasn't because I was scared shitless.

    "That doesn't answer my question," I snapped back, trying not to show how terrified I was and failing. My heartbeat pounded in my ears, uncomfortably loud in this quiet room.

    The creature in front of me remained silent, then its body rippled. Limbs shrunk to a more appropriate length, the thing's skin wriggled as if a mass of worms were wriggling around just beneath the surface. A crack echoed across the empty building, and their mouth opened, filled with far too many teeth.

    "You have been chosen, to explore the wider omniverse." As it spoke, teeth merged and flattened, the black serpentine tongue becoming thicker and pink. "When you accept, you will be allowed to visit select realities."

    Terror still ruled within me, so I began to consciously regulate my breathing. Deep breaths, slow breaths. Fear wouldn't rule me. Not anymore.

    "I still don't know what that means."

    Again, the creature before me paused. Its fingers lost digits, becoming human-shaped. Claws became nails and corpse-white skin bloomed into a healthy bronze. A regal nose appeared, and the jawline lost its literal edge –as though it were now shaped by organic bone, rather than whatever existed prior. The inhuman creature before me now looked human, but the too-insightful eyes remained, staring through me rather than at me.

    "Your home multiverse is one of the many Control universes that my… people maintain." Their voice was now bland, almost boring in contrast to the alien choir that it had been. One voice, vaguely androgynous. "Your language doesn't have the proper words for it, but suffice to say that there is little to no interference from individuals of my… nature. Therefore, when certain experiments are conducted, we are inclined to use denizens of this splinter of the omniverse, rather than another."

    "Use us?!" Through my fear, I felt an spark of moral indignation. "We're not test subjects!"

    The person before me, their form shifting yet further towards that of an average human. Blue veins exploded underneath their skin, splintering and snaking all across their body.

    "Oh?" their now-bland voice asked, pitched towards idle curiosity. "Your species uses its own members as test subjects. At least my people are up front about the test and are genuine about seeking volunteers. Humans in your world have only just barely managed to reach that point in the last century."

    "You said I would accept your offer," I snorted in reply. "That doesn't seem very 'volunteer friendly' to me."

    "Humans… have such an odd perception of time." The entity before me paused in thought, their head tilted at a sharp angle –like a dog with a too flexible neck. "So constricted, so… linear. And then your brains edit and blur what little you do retain to the point of absurdity."

    The entity clad in human flesh waved dismissively. Suddenly, we were both sitting in office chairs, with a desk between us, and a stack of papers between us.

    "To work within the merits of your language, I suppose it would be more accurate to assert that I've modeled your acceptance of this offer within many millionths of a decimal point. Close enough for certainty, but you humans have surprised me before."

    I scowled at his tone, fear and confusion quickly fading into offense.

    He pulled out a stack of forms, and presented a stapled contract to me, titled [Jumpchain Experiment D, version 4.6].


    "This is the standard contract we're offering you, with room for renegotiation down the road to gain access to other supplements and modifications. The basics are as follows: my people are studying the human soul and it's responsiveness to alterations. Should you agree, you will be transported to various splinters of the omniverse, with the opportunity to choose what alterations are made. You will remain in that world for a decade before being sent to the next, for a duration of ten trials."


    "You talked a big game about the moral superiority of your people," I began, skimming through the contract. "What if I want to stop? What if I retract my consent to the wider experiment?"

    The entity before me, whose bald head had begun to grow brown hair, shrugged. "Then after that trial, you will be pulled out of the experiment and placed back into your home segment of the omniverse. Time will be arranged so that less than a second will have passed before I brought you here, and your life in this plain little multiverse will continue as it always would have."

    "After the trial, not during?" I smelled a trap. "What if I want out of your 'experiment' mid-trial?"

    "Then you'll have to wait," Too-perceptive eyes met mine. "Ten of your human years is the minimum amount of time required for non-native alterations to your soul to… 'settle in,' so to speak. If we pull you out of a trial prior to that, then the changes that I make to your soul will not have had time to align with your out-of-context nature, and will strain to remain in its own multiverse. These alterations, pulling at your soul, will rend your essence apart and all that you are will be dissolved into the Gnawing Gap Between."

    The creature sighed, the picture of resigned sympathy. "But if it's any consolation, you will be given a choice after each trial. To stay in the new fragment of the omniverse you've found yourself in, to return to your previous existence –soul modifications optional –or to continue on with the experiment."

    I frowned in thought. It was a tempting deal, world-shattering revelations about the soul notwithstanding. "You keep saying that, 'alterations to the soul.' What does that mean, exactly? I want to understand what I'm getting into."

    "I keep forgetting you humans, for all your malleability, are still largely limited to your measly three dimensions." The entity's eyes closed for a moment, eyelids sprouting from their eye sockets, as a long-suffering look of annoyance flickered across his face. "Okay. So, lessons in basic omniversal cosmology. Kiddie stuff, I can explain this."

    He leaned forward onto the desk, gesturing as though he were a professor giving a lecture. "So there's your planet, right? And its multiverse is branched, where each world exists where a different choice is made? Where you moved left instead of right, where you grabbed your wallet with your right hand instead of your left?"

    He waited patiently until I nodded.

    "Right, well I'm betting that sounds unfathomably huge to a mortal human like yourself. But there's a wider omniverse outside of even that. Parallel multiverses with subtle foundational changes between them, sometimes it's something minor –like divinity existing –but sometimes it's something far greater, such as one plus one equaling three, instead of two. The further away you get from 'your' multiverse, the more differences you find in the multiverses there. And the wider term for this collection of multiverses is called the omniverse."

    That took me a minute to understand. But, after a while, it made sense. If every choice and every action served as a crossroads between a singular multiverse, then it makes sense that these Entities would be able to return to me at the exact moment that they had taken me away from. For them, it was probably nothing more than a series of coordinates. Longitude, latitude, but applied towards temporal and omniversal locations.

    The being that sat across from me nodded –neck bending at a humanly possible angle this time –the moment understanding finally settled within my mind.

    "Well, within each multiverse, there exists its own rules. Gravity, speed of light, and whatnot. But, with the exception of your own, there are also other factors at play. Sometimes it's a source of esoteric energy that can be harnessed in nonnative ways, sometimes the human species was created by an intelligence and relies upon that invested fragment of divinity for its consciousness. Regardless, when we insert you into each splinter of the multiverse, you'll be allowed to choose what alterations we make to your soul –after all, it's the integration itself that we want to examine, not what's integrated; that's a different experiment. After ten years, these alterations will have 'settled' into your soul to the point where it can persist beyond that multiverse, and you'll be given your choices."

    Damn, that's tempting. And, as I read through the contract, it seemed to follow along with the being's explanations. Contrary to my expectations, there were no hidden clauses, no doubletalk, no subtle traps. But still, ten years per trial and ten trials? Their attitude towards my entire species aside, they did have a point…

    "You're talking a hundred years. Unless you expect my corpse to be able to fulfill the contract, I don't see how I'll be able to do it."

    Confusion flickered across the being's face before being chased away by amusement. "Ah, entropy. Don't worry, time doesn't pass in the Vessel, every trials offers some sort of alternate body for your soul to inhabit, and many trials offer some sort of anti-aging alteration –should you decide to take it, of course."

    I sat down my copy of the contract, and began to mull it over. I was a high school graduate, differing my enrollment for a semester. I'd needed it, after everything that had happened. Originally, I'd planned to drive around the country, escape my small hometown and all the bittersweet memories that rubbed salt on Victoria's absence.

    But, I suppose, this would work just as well.

    "Where do I sign?"

    "Just like that. Your verbal agreement is enough, your memory of this conversation will be preserved within your own memory, free of your human post hoc edits and biases."

    Soulless eyes stared into mine, and my brain burned.


    ---​


    I awoke sometime later, head pounding.

    I lifted my head, and saw the Entity remained sitting in the chair, as if I wasn't knocked unconscious by… whatever their memory alterations had done to me. A form and reference sheet lay on the table, ready to be filled out.

    "My sincerest of apologies," the being before me lied. "Human grey matter makes for such an inefficient medium for cognition, I overloaded your mind by accident."

    I resisted the urge to snap back at my new boss, the key to my escape from pitying looks, rote sympathies and constant mothering of small town grannies who assured me that "it gets better." I sat up back up in my chair, and tried to ignore the pounding in my head as I looked at the reference sheets before me.

    "Hancock," as the reference pages informed me, was a multiversal Earth with superhumans. At least one operating in public, but the description alluded towards the existence of more. Were they operating in secret, to further their own agenda? Or were they living in secret, content to live their lives away from the public eye?

    I hoped for the latter –moral quandaries aside –but found myself resigned to the former.

    "How many super—"

    "No out of context information," The entity cut me off. "You get what you know about the world beforehand, what's in the reference material, and that's it. No peeks or hints from yours truly."

    I scowled, and continued reading, and the being's voice droned on.

    "You have three origins of choice. The first, is self-explanatory. Drop In. You are inserted into the multiverse's timeline as-is. You don't get the advantage of a life waiting for you to smoothly transition into, nor do you have citizenship paperwork at the ready. On the other hand, you don't have a certain… narrative history to work with, or against."

    I chose Drop In. My memories are mine, goddamn it.

    Behind clasped fingers, the Entity smiled knowingly. I ignored its too-wide grin.

    "Perks are the primary alterations to your soul that are available within this slice of the omniverse. You choose what alterations you want to make, and I splice them accordingly. While human souls are adaptable, they can still fray apart. Best to stick within the recommended limits, I think."

    I read through the Perk list, the very first one catching my eye.

    "Gods, Angels says that I will have elemental abilities, and that I can 'purchase' it more than once at a certain cost. Does the first elemental ability come free, or will I be forced to 'spend' space in my soul to make room for the addition?"

    The thing before me blinked, its eyes flickering to a void of black space that extended far beyond what the eye sockets should contain. Cold infinity lay before me in those eyes, and I was suddenly reminded that the being before me was merely puppeting the thin veneer of humanity across from me. I tried to lean back without being too obvious.

    "Yes," the thing said, its voice carrying a hint of its inhuman chorus. "The first can be spliced in with the perk, but any additional elemental abilities will take up more space."

    It blinked, and its eyes were once again a boring, average brown. Somehow, that terrified me even more.

    I returned to my form, and the reference material. I marked down Gods, Angels with Earth as my element. One More Time was free, so I marked it down. I didn't want to intimidate anyone, but better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it… especially if it was free.

    I added Remembrance to my list of perks without a second thought. My head still hurt from the thing's mind-whammy, and I wanted to avoid that as much as possible.

    Perfect Control would be a must. With immense strength and supernatural control over Earth, I'd need it. I refused to hurt another person because of an inability to control myself.

    Bucket of Paint was weird, but it was free, so it got added. I passed over Bottle with all the caution of a startled rattlesnake. I'd seen what alcoholism can do to a man, and I had no interest in being connected to it in any way whatsoever. A bottle of endless booze? That just felt like tempting fate.

    I didn't have enough room for any of the other Items, so I skimmed down to Closet of Suits. It was a weird feature, and more than a little out of place, but I could see the appeal in having clothes that never got dirty and repaired themselves. I was never really one to wear suits, but practicality won me over in the end.

    Having run out of room, I handed the Entity the form.

    "So how does this…" I trailed off to the cacophony of cars blaring their horns at me. One moment, I was sitting in the Warehouse. The next, I'm standing in the middle of an intersection in Los Angeles, getting cursed at.
     
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    • I cant wait to see what you do with this chain

    will this story be like a chapter per jump or is it going to expand on his time there
     
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